Its name is recorded first in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Laxintone, and may come from Anglo-Saxon Leaxingatūn, meaning the 'farmstead or estate of the people of a man called Leaxa.'

In addition, there are the remnants of a substantial system of fish-ponds, presumed to have belonged to the castle or to the manor house built later on the site of it, two mediæval mill mounds, and ridge-and-furrow earthworks.

Laxton parish today has much conventionally farmed land but retains also a significant part of the mediaeval open field system.

A 1635 survey of the parish carried out by Mark Pierce (still extant and held in the Bodleian Library) shows that these three fields were in use at that date, but that they were significantly larger than their current size.

[8] The venue is based around an old farm house (grid reference SK700670) which has a purpose-built exhibition centre with lecture theatre, and a Memorial Garden.

The village was featured in an episode of Terry Jones' Medieval Lives in 2004, which recorded part of the proceedings of the yearly court leet.

Laxton featured again in the second episode of Michael Wood's Story of England in 2010, which filmed the working of the open field system.